'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Solstices

Many people have noted the synchronicity of Christmas with other midwinter festivals and observances. And yes, there is something good and hopeful for people living a distance from the Equator as we come to the point in the year when the days, which have been drawing ominously shorter, start once again to lengthen.

We experienced that in New Zealand, too, this year, back in June.

But thinking about this made me think about the general, highly inequitable power relationships over the past 350 years between (some of the) people who are indigenes of nothern climes and just about all of those who indigenes of southern climes. These inequitable relations run across the entire arena of human affairs including economics, politics, and culture...

What kind of midsummer observances are indigenous southerners marking at this time of year?

And then, there are the whole swathe of cultures that grew up fairly close to the Equator, where changes in day-length or sun-angle are less important than the cycle of rainy seasons, monsoons, etc. Those don't really track with solstices at all, though they generally have their own annual rhythm. I wonder what kinds of festivals and observances the various indigenous cultures of those climes would be marking right now?

Anyway, we're now coming up to the (Roman-origined) New Year, too... All of these are fine occasions to do some reflection and stock-taking, and think about our wishes and commitments for the year ahead.

This past year has seen the continued, massive perpetration of violence in many of the world's continents, and humankind's continued engagement in practices that are highly inequitable among the world's different peoples. But it also started to see some early checking of the exercise of unilateral U.S. power and the emergence within the US citizenry of new questioning about the nature, uses, and abuses of that power at home and abroad. In 2006, I hope we see much more of this questioning and continued work towards the building of a worldwide movement for nonviolence and human equality.

And though we Quakers don't stick to a fixed liturgical calendar, we do (as I noted earlier) tend to think at this time of year about the birth of Jesus of Nazareth... A great and gentle teacher, a proponent of nonviolence, and a consistent advocate for human equality. He must be rubbing his eyes in sheer amazement at the many terrible things that have been done in his name-- over past centuries, and down into 2005, as well.